Personal blog, I guess. Writing down something from every board and miniatures game I've played, to keep a record to satisfy my statistics freak tendencies. Right click + open pictures for larger viewing.

Well, otherwise there would have been nothing exceptional here, but during one exceptional turn goblins brought the elf hunter down to only 3 hit points remaining, which was by then the closest call ever of a character death. This required for the elf hunter to run out of sight of goblins with Cleric trying to heal whatever he might.

Captain took a beating this time, losing 12 hit points. Granted, here was a lot bad luck on adventurer's behalf, when against the odds goblins developed a knack of remaining alive with only one hit point. I was too afraid of getting anyone to actually help Captain, so there he was, stranded and alone when adventurers themselves tried to get the remaining few damages in.

Human Swordsman: 2 damage, used 6 skill points. Had to spend 2 SP to run to go and help Elf Hunter! Found 18 gold.

Well, the only excitement here was when the poor Elf Hunter thought he could actually survive in melee when goblins scored a couple of nasty hits on the elf. It was bad choice from me to try and rush with the elf forward, when the melee monsters a little back were lucky enough to miss a couple of hits I had counted on.

I didn't actually play more than first scenario with normal rules, because I felt like I had seen enough game balance there.

With second try with a 4 member party, it felt that the difficulty raises a bit with more characters. There just isn't enough ranged attacks available to kill enough goblins so they can't effectively swamp. However, it only meant that every adventurer took a couple of damage.

Now, this scenario was a blast. It required a lot more effort now the place was swarming with goblins and it was difficult to carve a path to kill goblin shaman fast enough. This meant that both dwarf and elf had to drink their red potions not to risk anything, especially when there was no chance of rest before next fight. Difficulty seemed to be okayish.

Scenario 3 with... something completely different!

Okay, so I have been in contact with the developer and he told how he just slapped 2 skill points to every and all goblins. So before I started to write these things up I decided to play again the last scenario with this party of 4 and use following rules:

-Captain with no upgrades.
-2 point goblin archers (I thought that adding of 2 SP would make them a lot more powerful)
-Goblin Leader
-2 skill points on every goblin.

And here are the results:

Flame Wizard: 6 damage, used 8 skill points (had to run to get goblin leader into line of sight) Total gold: 34, 2x red potions

Elf Hunter: 11 damage, had to defend a few turns in melee because everyone else was too tied up to help! Used 4 skill points. Potion of Strenght. Total gold: 33.

Dwarf: Took a whopping 12 damage and used 5 skill points. Total gold: 33.

Captain... Captain took 17 damage. With no upgrades he was barely left alive with only 3 hit points remaining. Adding 2 skill points to every goblin had a huge impact on their effectiveness, and I feel this is the way to go, not lowering the point cost of archers. It brings a lot more choices to the game, when you can priorise your targets for example on the fact have they used their skill points or not.

This was also the first time ever I had to resort to using the Defending action in combat not to get elf hunter killed.

2 comments:

Awesome man! You playtest so much quicker than I do! Glad to find out that the 2SP increase does a lot to the game dynamic. On the DEF rolls, would you agree that the DEF values of the Adventurers need to go down (along the entire line, levels up included)?

If that would turn the tide too much towards the Goblins, we could always increase their points cost a little. Or would you say the DEF values are fine as they are? I want Chronicles to be dangerous!

It is all thanks to Vassal and warmachine/hordes module. Base size in Warmachine is 30 millimetres, which is slightly larger than 1 inch, but not too much. Then you got buttons for dice rolls (from 1d6 up to 6d6 and 1d3) and all kinds of markers you can put numbers on. Makes testing a system with focus on d6 quite easy ;)

I'm not sure how much the addition of SP to goblins changes things from the start. If I could have revised Cleric and rough draft for injury system instead of straight death, I could try if there is more close-call situations.

Also, if you have made some continue to the first adventure, that would be good to have too. Since, well, can't balance things totally on goblins, because I think there will be more dangerous foes later on :D